Firemoon (23 page)

As she had expected, nothing happened for a while. Peter Savaren awaited the right time. She sensed a certain intensifying of the unclean aura emanating from the camp. Something was going on. Something was being prepared and would soon hit them. Perhaps the spells were meant for the northerners, but that still wouldn’t bode well for the defenders.

Katja did some stretches and looked over the men she would fight alongside, and tried to remember their names. Memorizing twenty names in one go was a challenge.

The thin, one-eyed man was called Needle, for obvious reason. The stocky one was Lukas. Borgo of Stifla was the weathered one. Valur was broad-shouldered, with a perfectly chiselled face and blond hair. Kor was the one with the curly brown hair and ruined nose, and a huge axe. Jons had a face so rough it looked more like a fist, and barely said a word.

A few other names swam through Katja’s mind, but she couldn’t reliably connect them to faces. They could very well die by her side, and she didn’t know them.

War
, she thought.

Finally she felt the unclean aura intensify, like the opening of a song.

“They are coming,” she said to Jormundur’s back. He looked over his shoulder, met her gaze for a couple of moments, and nodded.

“Ready!” he shouted and the order was repeated by officers along wall. The militia fighters stood a bit straighter, tensed up and mostly fell silent. It was like watching a ripple go through still water.

For a moment Katja felt a strange pride at having had such an effect. Then she focused on the task.

They are coming. They are coming.

The aura was different from the previous night. Katja wasn’t sure in what way, but something sure had changed.

The third attack on Pine City began with a boulder. Katja heard a great smack from the southern end of the wall, and another one came a few moments later. Something had flown into the city, and after a few moments it was clear that catapults had entered the picture.

The third shot came, and the fourth and fifth, all just over the wall and into the city, and Katja pitied the men who had to listen to the missiles pass overhead.

I would not want to die like that. Not by something I couldn’t see.

The sixth rock hit the wall itself, and so did the seventh one.

“I was not expecting it to rain tonight,” Borgo remarked dryly, and earned a bit of a chuckle from those who could hear him.

The blows continued and Katja tried to guess at the number of catapults. Five, perhaps?

Demons would be next. She felt as much with utter certainty, and her empty palm cried out for a weapon.

“Demons. Very soon,” she said quietly to the captain.

He clenched his teeth and nodded again.

“Be ready,” he said to the Wolves and Eagles.

“Towers!” someone on the wall shouted after a few more rocks. “Two of them!”

Pine City began its own launches. Katja squinted and soon saw the towers, in the light of what little fire managed to catch on the wood in spite of the leather coating. They would arrive at the wall on either side of the gatehouse. And they were the source of the demon auras she sensed.

“They are in the towers!” she said.

“Ladders!” someone shouted.

“The demons are in the towers!” she insisted and drew her sword. The Eagles and Jormundur all looked at her and she took her first step towards the wall. Just then she began to feel what she had the previous night, up in the sky.

“Raptors!” she shouted with all her strength. “The raptors are back!”

“Spears!” Jormundur ordered, and was obeyed. The spearmen who had been spread out among the militia began to look up, and the catapult crews were especially wary.

“Come!” Katja said, and ran towards the fight that was about to start.  The Eagles were almost as wound-up from waiting as she was, and followed immediately. She heard Jormundur order the Wolves to the northern siege tower, and so headed for the southern one.

The divide again split open above them and the terrible shrieks of the bird-monsters sounded again, probably throughout the entire city. There seemed to be more of them this time.

Katja looked up and bumped into people and objects in her path, but put up with it. There was too much noise to make out the beating of wings, but judging by the shrieks they were circling overhead instead of attacking immediately. If the plan was to spread fear they were doing a good job of it. All were wary of a sudden dive and the enormous talons, and Katja heard no few men whimper and flinch at every shriek.

She led the Eagles up the stairs and shouted at people to get out of their way. The tower was about to reach the wall, and she heard those standing in front of it shout at their comrades to be at the ready. Arrows flew both ways, rocks still went into and over the wall and men screamed in rage, pain and fear.

Katja came up on the walkway and examined the situation. Those pushing the tower were still being shot at, but on it crawled, over the last three meters. She watched the hatch that would drop down and form a bridge.

One didn’t need to possess supernatural senses to know there was something very wrong with the contents. From within came metallic growls and others strange noises, and there was scratching against the interior. The men awaiting the arrival stood firm, but their faces showed fear. Katja was, however, the only one who sensed just how powerful these beasts were. She had rarely felt anything like it in her short career.

“Let the Eagles through!” she shouted.

The flying demons finally made good on their threats and dove down on the defenders with horrible noises. Katja looked up like most others and saw three attack the wall. She readied her sword and most moved away from the demons, but many of the spearmen did as they were supposed to and held their weapons high.

The closest one flew up away from the spear thrusts, and got hit with two arrows before it could vanish again. But it didn’t go far, and flew in small circles over their heads.

Katja held out her left hand and was about to employ the Sentinel Flame when the tower came up against the battlements. The hatch dropped and opened a window into the horror of the underworld.

The monsters were among the worst she had ever seen, like phantoms from the nightmare-visions of her childhood, and their shapes did not seem to be based on humans.

Many men simply screamed in fear, and most shrank back.

The three closest monsters, with red-glowing eyes, grasping, boneless limbs and sharp teeth in orifices that could hardly be called mouths, screamed at the sight of prey and charged.

Katja cast the Flame out and blocked their exit from the tower. The monsters roared in frenzied rage at meeting this force, but Katja just screamed back.

“Arrow! Spears!” she shouted. “Quick!”

Three spears were thrown into the power and hit the monsters, though not to any great effect. The Eagles filled the space left by the retreating defenders, and she waited for the right moment to release the Flame.

Someone loosed an arrow into the demonic crowd, another spear was thrown and someone shouted for more throwing weapons just before the raptor dove down at them.

Katja couldn’t help but release the Flame and brace for the attack, along with the Eagles. The raptor was hit with three spears but managed to swipe at her with its talons. She slashed at one leg and inflicted a wound, the raptor vanished up into the darkness, and the demons exited the tower.

The first victim was a man who had meant to drive a long spear through the Flame. A demon easily batted the shaft aside and closed a tooth-filled opening around his head, biting through it.

Katja channelled the Flame into her sword and approached them with a war cry. The men followed.

Blood spewed as another man was hit with feelers and claws and flew in two directions. Then the two forces met, with the red-glowing sword in the centre. Everything happened very quickly.

Many of the monsters had a longer reach than swords and axes, and a few shields were shattered almost instantly. Spears hit locations that would have been considered heads and bellies on humans, but did little to slow down these adversaries.

The only way to stand against such a thing was with ferocity and screaming rage at these enemies of the world of mankind. The soldiers slashed and stabbed frenziedly. Inexact facsimiles of earthly flesh were difficult to injure, but fast, repeated blows did slow them down and made retaliation difficult.

Katja struck at some kind of limb that came at her, and then thrust her sword through the demon. It screamed both into her ears and her mind, but fell silent as she yanked the sword upwards and let the Sentinel Flame cut it almost in two. The body crumbled apart.

A man was seized and thrown over the demons and into the tower, where he was torn to pieces.

Katja was struck at, and she had no space to move out of the way. So she ducked, took a mild blow to the helmet and again slashed with the burning blade. The monster fell back onto its siblings with a horrible wound that would have killed a human immediately.

Katja let the Flame back inside herself and threw it back out in the form of the rune, and the demons were stuck on the little space they had taken under control. The men too fell back upon suddenly seeing fire.

“Strike through it!” she demanded. “It only burns demons! Strike through now, now, now!”

She felt the Flame drain her endurance and repeated the order loudly before being obeyed.

The demons could only retreat by climbing onto the battlements and back into the tower, so they had to defend themselves with their strange limbs as they were attacked ferociously by those who dared charge through the Flame.

One demon fell beneath axe blows and began to vanish from this world as the earthly body died. Another one fell, and the third, and the men shouted defiantly with a certain shrill horror in their voices.

A demon recovered from its fear of the Flame and struck back. Jons was thrown to the side and into two of his comrades, and another demon got hold of an Eagle whose name Katja didn’t remember. It swung the man by his leg and knocked down three other soldiers. A militia man drove a spear into the monster and inflicted a significant wound, but it reacted by squeezing its victim’s ankle until it broke.

Katja moved the Flame back into her sword and struck before the monsters could attack again. The fallen men had given her space to swing her weapon properly and make almost full use of her agility, and she slashed one beast in two, dodged the claws of another one and slashed it across the belly, and put the blade in the path of a third, which cost it its limbs.

The man with the broken ankle was hurled off the wall, and Kor wasn’t quick enough when one of his blows didn’t hit as well as he’d intended. A hunched, blackened creature with a beak-like mouth bit off his arm at the elbow. That gave a man with a glaive an opening and he drove the weapon deep into the creature’s head. It fell and vanished from the material world as Kor fell backwards with a horrible scream on his lips.

The raptor dove again, assuming it was the same one, and this time Katja greeted it with the Sentinel Flame and slashed through the legs and a good portion of the torso. The monster fell down among soldiers, who began frenziedly stabbing at it.

The wave that had emerged from the tower was beginning to break, and the Eagles could now attack a single demon from multiple directions. Valur the handsome slashed through a demon’s jaw, and someone thrust a spear into its side before it could retaliate. Borgo drove his shield into a maimed monster’s mouth, and then plunged his sword up into it and out the top of the head. A soldier with a bleeding head wound and broken teeth drove an axe into a leg and brought down a demon, which Katja then stabbed to death.

The rocks kept hitting the wall’s southern part, like a slow beat on the world’s biggest war drum. Men fought to prevent the northerners from ascending their ladders, and the raptors made surprise dives that the spearmen sometimes managed to stop and sometimes not. The noise was overwhelming and the casualties clearly already considerable. This was war.

Katja loved it

She slashed the Sentinel Flame through the last demon that posed any real threat. Then she took a few steps back and went over the situation as the Eagles and others finished off the crippled and surrounded monsters.

She still heard the roars of the demons in the other tower. Her mind was far too busy and there was far too much distraction for her to make full use of her sensitivity, but it seemed clear that the monsters were doing better over there. It was hard to make out actual words in the chaos, but it seemed more men were being sent to the northern tower.

Should I go there?

The losses around the tower closer to her had been considerable, though most of the Eagles still stood. Should she urge them to abandon this tower and pass through the gatehouse to aid in the fight on the other side? Now that they had the option, men were arriving with burning tar to pour into the tower, but that wouldn’t slow demons down if more showed up.

What should I do?!
she thought, terrified of her own decisions and their consequences.

The northerners made the choice for her by climbing up near the tower on ladders no-one had paid any heed when there were demons to deal with. They were also making progress in establishing a foothold to the south. Katja didn’t need to be a general to see that it would be bad if they managed to join and form a large group up on the wall.